What we've seen so far of The Witcher 3 in screenshots has been nice but not jaw-dropping. This is a next-gen RPG: through it, people expect a sight of the future. Badowski explained the debut screenshots as being from a build of the game powered by an old renderer, which will be improved. "The overall visual quality is very important to us," he stressed. "High-quality visuals are our trademark."

That renderer will soon boast DirectX 11 "bells and whistles", but the initial focus was on creating a dynamic game world - beautification could come later. And with the game not due out until next year, "we have time to achieve it", Badowski said. Also: "I can tell you that screenshots are taken from our desktops and our policy is not to pimp up anything on screenshots."

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He pays attention to what The Witcher fans are saying, and the number-one concern he's seen about The Witcher 3 is that fans think the traditionally tight stories of the series will be sacrificed to fit an open world.

Not so. "We don't want to make any compromises in storytelling," he told me. "We simply needed to come up with a larger-scale story. That's it. The world is bigger so we need to fill it with good stories.

"We don't want to change the gameplay into the sandbox experience - that's not the plan."

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Scripted quick-time events (QTEs) have been dumped for The Witcher 3. "We won't have any quick-time events," confirmed Badowski, and that lack of scripted battles means you can stumble upon and kill powerful monsters when you are only comparatively weak. "This time around you can defeat your enemy taking point by point," he said. "If you are good enough as a player you can do it," although "it will take hours and hours" to do so.

The Witcher 3 will also have a slow-motion ability you can use in combat to target vulnerable parts of monsters. It was thought that this was similar to Fallout 3's VATS system, but actually it's a part of the The Witcher 3's Senses mechanic. Geralt uses this to build up a detailed knowledge of his foe before battle. He can use his Senses to pick up tracks and spot clues that other people miss, and then he can literally deploy that accrued knowledge in battle. "And the game helps you," Badowski said, "slowing down a little bit, and you can use the perfect moment to have a killing blow. But it all depends on your knowledge."

Multiplayer-ish? Something?

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The Witcher 3 is due at the end of next year and there's still much we don't know about it. For instance, will it have multiplayer (a first for the series)? "We're thinking about something," Badowski answered, "but I cannot explain it now. You can expect some information later on. Sorry for that!" I probed about whether it could be something similar to the Dark Arena mode in The Witcher 2. "I don't think so," he said.

You can be fairly confident, though, that CDPR doesn't have MMO ambitions for The Witcher series. "The story is not perfect for MMOs," said Badowski, and joked about how out-of-fiction it would be for 10 white-haired Geralts to be running around before him. "There are many different types of games that can fit better to the universe or lore," he said.

“A lot of people on forums are saying, ‘No, but you guys are anti-DRM,’” Iwinski admitted during an interview with RPS. “And we really are anti-DRM. But at the same time, there are people who’ll be fine with [Xbox One's online-heavy DRM]. They’ll buy the console and just want to play. Why should we not give them this option?”

“That’s our approach, but at the same time, we don’t know what the final policies are. Things might be changing. There’s a lot of heat right now. From our perspective, we’ll always choose the most gamer-friendly solution. And on the platform where we have control – which is PC – we’ll release on GOG day one and DRM-free.”

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“It’s too early to talk specifics, but definitely all the DLCs and updates will be free,” he said. “Of course, we’ll see what the platform holders will allow – what we can do for free [on next-gen consoles]. I mean, there are different business models on consoles. From our standpoint, we’ll definitely do everything we can to deliver the same experience across all platforms.”

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“Having said all that, we of course have to count money,” he said. “We have a whole production team and production procedures. But at the end of the day, the game [counts] – and not the money. Because the game will make the money if it’s good. Some people think it’s the other way around, and in the short run – business-wise – it makes sense. ‘I will sell this small thing for three dollars. It will make me $300,000. It’s good money. I will show more profit.’ But at the end of the day, how many fans have you lost? And that’s just a very simple mentality we try to avoid.”

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Will Have 36 Different Endings, No Load Times, and More

Q: Firstly, the loading times… how prevalent will those be? Do you have any idea how long they’ll be and how often you’ll encounter them?

A: Thanks to new technology on RedEngine3, we were actually able to create a world without loading screens as you travel across the world. This should answer your question. *laughs*

Q: Firstly, the loading times… how prevalent will those be? Do you have any idea how long they’ll be and how often you’ll encounter them?

A: Thanks to new technology on RedEngine3, we were actually able to create a world without loading screens as you travel across the world. This should answer your question. *laughs*

Q: Did you encounter any massive difficulties so far in porting the game to next-gen consoles? Fitting this huge world onto a console can’t be easy.

A: Well, we’re not actually porting the game. We were doing it multi-platform since the very beginning. Sure, it’s challenging, especially since the technology is quite new, but we were thinking about it since the beginning. It’s a bit more ‘interesting.’ It’s challenging, but it’s very much possible.

Q: From what I understand, this will be the final chapter in the Witcher saga? It’ll bring Geralt’s quest to a close?

A: Exactly. That’s our goal. To close the story of Geralt of Rivia.

Q: On that note, will there be multiple endings?

A: Yes, sure. We’re having around 36 endings, as far as I remember. These affect the state that you will leave the world in after your playthrough.